Launch. Land. Repeat.

I'm as much of a SpaceX fanboy as they come, but Blue Origin coming out of the dark and suddenly pulling off these hugely successful launches and landings has me extremely excited. The more companies are working on this, the better! Now let's get to that SSTO!

Even then, the New Sheppard is a long ways from orbit, so idk why it's even relevant. Their goal is to go up and kiss space, then come back down with hardly any lateral movement. They'd need to build an entirely different and much more massive rocket to begin even thinking about orbit. The only benefit from this is from the luxury of space tourism, which may be a niche thing that gets them some money for a short bit, but unless they're developing a much bigger rocket behind the scenes, them they will soon be left behind. Now, I haven't followed them too much, so idk what their longterm goals are, this could just be a testbed for a rocket in development kinda similar to the Grasshopper, but it's got a long ways to go to even begin to compare to a Proton or Atlas or something like that, much less an SSTO.

I feel like it's extremely silly and shortsighted to act like they wouldn't have thought about the importance of entering orbit to their objective. They just produced an engineering first and it seems like an extremely sensible proof of concept before pushing forward to much larger production. Are we all so arrogant that we think it wouldn't have occurred to them?

You don't know why valuable new technology in rocket launching and landing is relevant? I don't think you're being honest.

Bingo. The Wright brothers didn't make the Atlantic crossing on their first flight (or ever), but their work made monumental progress towards regular human flight. Sure, Blue Origin didn't reach orbit, but they've proven a reliable, reusable space taxi system that works! One step at a time!

Why would they go to 100km in the air if they're only testing suborbital launching and landing? Couldn't they do that without the altitude? And then test their gear for the pressures and radiation of space separately on board an established launch system at far less cost?

This company may have a lot of legitimate things going for it, but I feel like at least some of what's going on here is a marketing ploy to lure investment from people who don't understand that "getting to space" is only 1% of the effort and 1% of the usefulness of "getting to orbit".

The video tagline of getting millions people to space should say, "Our technology will bring millions of people to space, where they will dangle for several minutes before coming straight back down."

I wiuld imagine they're doing this for a couole reasons. One, is to build tech that can scale up into larger rockets. Two, is to get more investors with this kind of publicity.

Sure they haven't hit orbit. But they also don't have contracts with NASA to resupply the ISS. So they have to go about their development, and funding and investment a bit differently. This is the "cheaper" route, and is low-hanging fruit while still being extremely impressive. With plans to get to orbit, this is very cool, especially (I think) with their focus on peoppe movement instead of stuff movement.

Than a comparable fully reusable multistage rocket, yes, that's true in principle. However, Skylon aims to save big on oxygen weight with its partially air-breathing Sabre engines, which would change the equation. And if Skylon or another vehicle can be both fully reusable and SSTO, that might yet end up being less complex than turning around a reusable multistage launcher, and those much hoped-for airplane-type operations could make up in frequency what they lack in payload to LEO.

That being said, there'd probably still be a place for multistage launchers too, especially reusable ones. And for heavy lifters in the SLS ballpark, reusable or not. Scaling up Skylon to lift ten times its currently envisaged 15t to LEO would probably not be possible with existing materials and the planned Sabre engine.

Could you please provide proof for your claim. Given that we have no way to know all future SSTO technologies, it is pretty stupid to claim categorically that SSTO is not competitive against reusable rockets.

Is it true for current SSTOs? possibly, bit hard to know since we have no working SSTOs. So all we have at the moment are estimates. I think the main point here is there is some estimates saying Multistage re-usable rockets ala SpaceX will beat Skylon, but again these are estimates. We have neither ready working Skylon or a ready working fully re-usable rocket.

Single Stage To Orbit rockets, because of the rocket equation, have almost 0 payload, which makes them dubiously useful. I'm sure that, like most technologies, it will become practical and possible, but I'm not going to hold my breath. I would love to be proven wrong, but I don't expect to see much more than testing done in my life time.

AFAIK most ssto designs include jet engines that switch to a closed stage above a certain height to get to orbit speeds and reenter similar to the shuttle, the issue is that we don't have open cycle engines that can switch to closed while remaining efficient in both modes, we also don't have material that is able to reenter over and over without serious refurbishment

we also don't have material that is able to reenter over and over without serious refurbishment

Yes we do, regular old aluminum works as long as you have enough surface area. Stop making spaceships so dense and they won't generate nearly the heat. That's why Skylon isn't planning to even use a heat shield.

Well there is your problem. You assume SSTOs are normal rocket powered and not for example beam powered or other fancy tech. SSTO has nothing to do with rockets. It just means you don't drop bits of during the flight.

Are complained about the comment being so broad and categorical. I'm not denying it is not possible, that with traditionally rocket powered SSTOs don't have down sides compared to staging. Problem is most people aren't thinking about powering SSTOs with traditional rockets.

When you talk about space stuff people must remember the planning usually happens on decade scale. So you shouldn't box yourself with thinking what we have now is what we have 10 or 20 years from now.

In my opinion the movie ignores the best parts the book had to offer. I was really expecting a movie about a man struggling not only against a desolate planet but loneliness and zero hope. It doesn't do that. PROBABLE SPOILERS FOR BOTH BOOK AND MOVIE It focuses heavily on the rescue and what is going on on earth. Don't want to spoil much but I think it was a fine movie but missed the opportunity to truly be about a stranded astronaut/bleakness (something like Moon or 2001: A Space Odyssey) and the trials he goes though. The movie makes it seem like rescue was pretty straightforward and that everything works out pretty dandy on Mars for Watney (only addressed the HAB rupture).

My hope is this isn't a race to "win" my meaning is that I hope both companies become viable and utilized in the future. Competition is good and right now things are looking great for blue origin and space x

The reason the video puts such emphasis on reaching the Kármán line is that the vehicle does not even come close to reaching orbital velocity. It's doing something similar to what the SpaceX Grasshopper was doing in 2013, but to a much greater altitude.

And while the Falcon 9's 2nd stage is disposable, the reusable 1st stage achieves a higher altitude than New Shepard.

EDIT: And the reason "land vertically" is qualified is that an X-15 flew a few km higher on two separate flights in 1963.

It's doing something similar to what the SpaceX Grasshopper was doing in 2013, but to a much greater altitude.

Grasshopper wasn't remotely capable of going into space and Blue Origin had a rocket doing what Grasshopper did back in 2006, just like McDonnell Douglas had a rocket doing that sort of thing back in 1994.

The first stage of Falcon 9 also doesn't even come close to orbital velocity. On the Jason-3 mission where the booster successfully landed, it's top speed was only 10% higher than New Shepard,

New Shepard got to a bit less than 1.3km/s and I thought the Jason-3 mission had a lower than usual speed at MECO. The figures I've seen in the past are 2.1km/s in expendable mode, 1.6km/s for a barge landing, and 1.4 km/s for RTLS. It's hard to find accurate numbers though so they could be wrong.

their launches arent comparable to what spacex does. Straight line launches aren't useful for anything other than potentially brief space tourism, and even then it wouldnt be very good space tourism because you'd still feel nearly full gravity when you reach space. Being in orbit is very different from being in space

Indeed, but you can already do that in a plane in the atmosphere. For the purposes of space tourism, only feeling weightless when you are already falling back down in a straight line, for a short period, isnt very useful.

You feel weightlessess as soon as MECO. That's a full 4 minutes of weighlessness, near and above the Kargan Kármán line, with a full view of the stars, the curvature of the Earth and the continent below you. This is the most epic ride made relatively affordable by the reusable parts, and it doesn't pretend to be anything else at the moment.

This is simply not true. There are tons of experiments that only need to be in space a few minutes. It would be totally unnessecary to put those in orbit. I know many scientist who would kill for a small reusable sounding rocket like we see here.

The very same New Shepard booster that flew above the Karman line and then landed vertically at its launch site last November has now flown and landed again, demonstrating reuse. This time, New Shepard reached an apogee of 333,582 feet (101.7 kilometers) before both capsule and booster gently returned to Earth for recovery and reuse.

Data from the November mission matched our preflight predictions closely, which made preparations for today’s re-flight relatively straightforward. The team replaced the crew capsule parachutes, replaced the pyro igniters, conducted functional and avionics checkouts, and made several software improvements, including a noteworthy one. Rather than the vehicle translating to land at the exact center of the pad, it now initially targets the center, but then sets down at a position of convenience on the pad, prioritizing vehicle attitude ahead of precise lateral positioning. It’s like a pilot lining up a plane with the centerline of the runway. If the plane is a few feet off center as you get close, you don’t swerve at the last minute to ensure hitting the exact mid-point. You just land a few feet left or right of the centerline. Our Monte Carlo sims of New Shepard landings show this new strategy increases margins, improving the vehicle’s ability to reject disturbances created by low-altitude winds.

Though wings and parachutes have their adherents and their advantages, I’m a huge fan of rocket-powered vertical landing. Why? Because — to achieve our vision of millions of people living and working in space — we will need to build very large rocket boosters. And the vertical landing architecture scales extraordinarily well. When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance. We solved the inverted pendulum problem on New Shepard with an engine that dynamically gimbals to balance the vehicle as it descends. And since New Shepard is the smallest booster we will ever build, this carefully choreographed dance atop our plume will just get easier from here. We’re already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it’s still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year.

Also this year, we’ll start full-engine testing of the BE-4 and launch and land our New Shepard rocket – again and again. If you want to stay up to date with all the interesting work that our team is doing, sign up for email updates at www.blueorigin.com/interested.

When you do a vertical landing, you’re solving the classic inverted pendulum problem, and the inverted pendulum problem gets a bit easier as the pendulum gets a bit bigger. Try balancing a pencil on the tip of your finger. Now try it with a broomstick. The broomstick is simpler because its greater moment of inertia makes it easier to balance.

I hope they have LEO capability on their road map, would male the market a lot more exciting.

"We’re already more than three years into development of our first orbital vehicle. Though it will be the small vehicle in our orbital family, it’s still many times larger than New Shepard. I hope to share details about this first orbital vehicle this year."

I have no idea what he's referring to. But ESA is developing a reusable spacecraft with IAX making a test flight on Feb 2015 and that development work will continue with the Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe. Perhaps he's confusing those spacecrafts with the space shuttle - I don't know. Clearly those, being robotic spacecrafts and all, are conceptually very different from the NASA shuttle.

The first test flight of the current New Shepard design was only a partial success. The booster and capsule reached their target altitude but while the capsule made a safe landing, the booster had a problem and crashed. They didn't cover up the failure.

I think it's just that their earlier work was much more low-key like a skunkworks operation and they didn't say much about it in public. I suspect they've been talking to others in the industry for a while though which is why ULA were willing to select them to provide the engines for their next generation booster which came as a surprise to just about everyone.

it's because SpaceX is a launch company, BO is a tourism company. BO's first rocket blew up, that happens live, all their orders get cancelled or never happen, company dies. SpaceX has a failure, it's considered just part of the business.

And the Soviet Union was able to far exceed the US in the 50s and 60s in rocket technology and space innovation. When you have to play with public support and opinions things get way out of control on cost and projects. Look at DARPA vs NASA. One is very secretive and has lots of tech such as the Blackbird being built in the 60s while NASA had to deal with public support for all their projects.

I would think of the first time a vehicle has landed twice as pushing the frontier. SpaceX tackles harder challenges an solves bigger problems, but you have to acknowledge that this is the first time a propulsivly landing rocket has been to space twice.

Yeah, Blue Origin has done some impressive work, but SpaceX has shown they can do the same thing while putting working payloads into orbit. Hell, SpaceX was one icy strut (presumably, final details haven't been released yet) from sticking the landing on a drone barge in 10'+ waves earlier this month, and that's after a successful payload deployment. Blue Origin doesn't seem to be even close to actual payloads. Going straight up to the 100km mark and coming back down is relatively simple by comparison.

Many other parts of the NASA infrastructure are still looking at cuts.

As someone who spent years working at the Marshall Space Flight Center (Huntsville, AL), NASA is a sad shadow of it's former self. There's lots of weed and empty buildings, even weeds in empty buildings.

Every time they do something cool it's with almost no fanfare and no advanced notice.

This is how the Soviets operated their space program. There's no telling how many rockets BO failed to launch/land before successfully landing that one. Their successes are public, their failures are kept private.

The lack of fanfare makes their accomplishments less impressive, not more.

So we now live in a world where sending out emails to thousands of people, producing and publishing a promotional video online, and landing on the front page of reddit constitutes "quiet" in the minds of some people. Why? Because major news outlets didn't immediately pick it up.

Haha :) Well, compare this to the SpaceX launch, which I was looking forward to days in advance. When I went to confirm this one, all I could find was an article saying "Blue Origin might be planning a rocket launch this weekend" based on flight restrictions filed in the area. And when I commented this had just a handful of upvotes, so it even took reddit a couple hours to catch on.

How big of an achievement is this? I see these things popping up every now and then here and in the news, and I can't shake the feeling that if they can do it, couldn't NASA have done it before them? Are these technologies actually viable options to achieve anything significant (a moonlanding, lifting a satellite into space etc.) or can they merely lift a crew capsule into orbit and come back?

I'm not trying to talk down the achievement here, but I am genuinely curious as to how important it really is.

NASA was stuck for a very long while with the Space Shuttle. That was NASA's attempt at a re-usability, but it failed pretty bad since the costs / launch remained as high (or even higher) as if they would have built a brand new shuttle / rocket for each launch.

I'm not sure what their current plans are for re-usability. It doesn't seem to be a focus for them, as the new rocket their developing has no mention of that.

What SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing with landing and then re-using part of their rockets is just about making launches less costly. While this by itself is not something that will instantly propel us to Mars, it does mean that if successful, launch costs will start going down. This means more launches, more companies / countries affording to go into space, bigger projects such as going to Mars become more feasible, etc.

It's also worth noting that SpaceX currently is where Blue Origin hopes to be in 5+ years (SpaceX has lifted a satellite into Space, on a high orbit as well, and then came very close to landing the rocket's first stage on a barge just last week.), so at the moment at least, what Blue Origin is doing is not really an achievement for the industry, just for them. Props to them however since they seem to be on the right track to becoming a major player in the launch and space industry.

While this by itself is not something that will instantly propel us to Mars, it does mean that if successful, launch costs will start going down.

One of the reasons why NASA isn't currently focusing on re-usability is due to their current focus on developing a crewed space exploration vehicle that will propel us to Mars. What SpaceX is doing is very exciting and full of potential, but it irks me a bit when people just gloss over everything NASA is working on simply because they are not directly competing with SpaceX in developing reusable launch systems.

Perhaps in the future NASA could stage a Mars expedition with nothing but the Orion and lots of support hardware launched cheaply by the Falcon Heavy.

Launch the hab/propulsion module/fuel/etc. on multiple falcon heavy launches for relatively low cost, then Orion can Launch on the Senate Launch System and meet up with the ship in orbit. Everyone is happy

What SpaceX and Blue Origin are doing with landing and then re-using part of their rockets is just about making launches less costly. While this by itself is not something that will instantly propel us to Mars […]

But it is a big step. If you can easily put a habitat like the ISS into space but for a fraction of the cost everything becomes much more realistic.

Theoretically, once you get the landings down the sky is the limit. Rockets scale up fairly easily (although it IS rocket science) so if you have a solid model for re-using your vehicles you are going to be saving a bundle in the long term. NASA -did- do this before them, but they went with a horizontal landing vehicle you may know as the "space shuttle" The problem with horizontal landing vehicles is that they don't scale up very well. You cant just take the Discovery and make everything 20 times bigger, the stresses on the airframe would be insane.

Yes, the technologies are perfectly viable for satellite launches, crew launches, or even moonlandings if they had a lander to carry. The reusable SpaceX stage one is something like 60 million bucks. That's a significant savings for every time you want to put junk into orbit, and they have already deployed a satellite.

Blue Origin has yet to actually orbit anything, or deploy a satellite, but they have shown they have a solid system for landing and turning around a launch vehicle.

The most important thing that landing rockets vertically will do is lower cost and increase the rate at which rockets will be launched in the future. This is due to the fact that you won't need to build a 100mil+ vehicle each time you want to get a payload into space. And that is a biggie right now.

The shuttle didn't work out to be cheap or as reusable as they thought or hoped.

The DC-X didn't get enough funding so the project was scrapped after it fell over before it's second test flight, even though it demonstrated taking off and landing and being completely reusable the first time.

I'm extremely excited about this and the work they're doing. And the more everyone is working on getting us all into space, the sooner I can stand on another planet.But, for the love of all that's dear, please touch it up a bit so it doesn't look like a gigantic dildo. Anything. Something.

Need to demonstrate the ability to put things into orbit up to 250 km or have a plan that gets you there. I am impressed with their ability to get how far they did but low orbit such as iss orbit is necessary for financial future. Throwing tourists into a vertical bunjee ride is not going to space.

I'm assuming this price is higher than their costs / launch, since they probably want to make a profit. Also, having a re-usable stage 1 won't completely cut all costs, since you still have an expendable Stage 2 + fuel + refurbishing of Stage 1 costs + launch site operations / personnel + whatever else I'm forgetting.

So in reality, while it's hard to say an exact number, I'd say a re-usable Stage 1, if all goes well, should decrease the cost of a launch by 25%-ish? It's a guesstimate of course, but more accurate I'd say than 60mil. If anyone has any other numbers, please let us know, I'm very curious about this as well.

I think they don't get as much love and attention, because everything about them is hush-hush super secret, until after they do something successful, and have a prettied up marketing video to release. SpaceX live-streams their launches, and landing attempts, releases footage of their progress and tests, as well as failed attempts. It just seems to get the hype machine going a lot better than "Hey, we did this thing. We didn't announce to anyone we were doing it, but here's an edited down video of us doing it after the face"

I think it's because bezos comes off as a dick whenever he does something with Blue. It's still a great achievement for a fledgling space program, but you don't act like "I did it first" when spaceX lands their whatever hundred ton rocket after you landed your 40 ton or so rocket. The spaceX rocket coming from an actual orbit.

It also doesn't help that bezos publishes what happens pretty much after it happens, he posts an amazon home page letter or an email to employees.

They don't get the same amount of love because going UP is the really easy part of space travel.

SpaceX is managing to land rockets after doing the hard part of space travel: going sideways really really quickly.

The ISS for example is traveling at 17130mph relative to the ground. The way Blue Origin is launching now, if their craft would make it up to the ISS's 400km altitude, it would be going 17130mph slower than the ISS.

SpaceX is doing useful things with their Falcon launches, and testing their tech on the way down. Blue Origin is really just showing off proof-of-concept stuff that in it's current state doesn't really have any practical use.

It's still super cool, and worth admiration and praise. Just not as cool as the much bigger vessels SpaceX is launching :)

Okay so first I'm an Elon Musk fanboy through and through. This video and achievement doesn't get me excited for a couple of reasons. First, this was a one stage rocket. Second, it didn't bring a payload to orbit, it just went up and down in a straight line, which is something spacex has done for longer, just not as high in the sky.

I agree with this, I am no fanboy of either. But its pretty clear cut and dry that SpaceX has done 10x more then Blue Origin. It's also not that I want to see one or the other crash and burn, I want both to succeed, and move our space race along! Competition is good in ANY sector of the world/business!

But what irks me about Blue Origin is... the timings... They are really be melodramatic with their launches. No dates given to public, no announcement, no nothing. To me, that just lessens my excitement. SpaceX hyping up their launches is what gets more people active and involved in the space scene.

Now when I said timings.. I mean by real life timings.. SpaceX does an achievement, then not even 1-3 weeks later Jeff is trying to do something to get his name in the media. He piggybacks off others achievements.

You could also say he is being more 'professional' about it, not giving dates, not hyping it up, and being silent. But too me, I see it as they don't know what dates are solid yet. I feel Jeff pushes dates up / wants things going faster when SpaceX does something big (EX: Attempted barge... and now not even 2 weeks later, Jeff is doing round 2)

On the technical side, they both make huge leaps. But Blue Origin dream is well, its not really for 'space'. It's to make money of idiot tourist who think they actually dipping into Space. Yes they want to go farther with their rockets and do payloads, but not anytime soon. They want Tourist goal to be reached first, so it's still easily 5-10 years before we see them do Cargo for NASA. That's my last and final problem. They made a rocket to profit off of tourist. Where SpaceX is making a rocket to send crew to ISS, and beyond, and do Cargo, all in one.

That's my 2 cents on the whole 'race' between Elon and Jeff. I have no personal grudge for either, and enjoy watching both. I enjoy making both in KSP. But if I had to be truly honest, or had to place a bet or donate money.. it'd go to SpaceX. They much more in line to accomplish 3 goals in 1 over Jeffs 1 goal "send people to space" which isn't really Space.. ITs a huge bungee cord with a rocket motor... Its just 'meh' to me.

SpaceX has 2-3 years headstart on them, but considering how much money Bezos has behind him with Amazon, there is a good chance they can spend their way to catch up. I imagine both SpaceX and Blue Origin will be able to launch competing satellite internet businesses over the next 10 years.

And SpaceX was founded in 2002 and Blue Origin in 2000. Not sure Bezos has been spending his way to catch up. Hopefully from now on none of those numbers matter and BO gets there orbital rocket in the market as quickly as possible

True for orbital rockets although Blue Origin have a big lead in hydrogen engine technology and seem to be ahead in developing large methane engines. The next 5 years should be very interesting for both companies.

I can't find the video anymore of the rocket landing and a camera showing the crew watching it. When it lands there was so much excitement, it was unbelievable. Does anybody still a link to that video? It gives me the chills